Training Tuesday: How to Use Sales Judo to Overcome "Just Send Me the Information"

How many times has this happened to you? After a few minutes of chatting with a prospect, they cut you short and tell you: “Just send me your information. I'll review it and get back to you.”

Now, tell me this, what do you think the chances are that your prospect actually means what he said, that he's actually going to wait for your email, drop everything he's doing to read it, and then return your call? They're very low.

In this blog, I'm going to teach you how to use sales judo to overcome this objection and turn a loss into a win.

"Send me your information" is one of the most common objections used by prospects during sales calls. There’s a big reason why your prospects gravitate towards this response: They get to get rid of the sales rep without being rude (nobody really wants to be rude).

It leaves the salesperson with a false sense of hope. The rep is left saying, “Well, at least they didn't say no.” So then, the prospect feels like they're being nice by taking the salesperson's feelings into account (everybody likes to be nice).

While I appreciate people being nice, it's important to recognize this for what it really is — this is an OBJECTION.

If you hear this objection and you don't overcome it, but instead hang your hopes on crafting a great email as your next step in the sales process, then you're really wasting your valuable time. Your prospect will probably never even open that email, and you never got to ask any qualifying questions to figure out if this prospect was even a good fit. So, instead, you should use sales judo when someone says: “Just send me the information.” In judo, you get your opponent to get their momentum going in a certain direction, and then you use that momentum to your benefit.

Step 1: The Disarm

So, when you get this objection, the first step is to disarm your prospect. How do you disarm someone? Well, when they ask you if you can just send them the information, say "yes." Don't fight them. Ask them for their email address, even if you already have it. Say something like: “Yeah, I'd be happy to email some information over to you. What's your email, John?”

Step 2: The Setup

This makes people lower their guards, because they feel like they they just saved themselves from a pesky sales call. But now, here's where sales judo comes in — this is what I call The Setup.

Ask your prospect a question about what kind of information they would be most interested in. You can say: “I have a 50 page product feature eBook that I could email you, but first I want to ensure that I only send you the most relevant pieces of information. Can you tell me if you’re more interested in in X or Y or Z?”

When they answer this question, they've given you information that you can use to to craft a great challenging statement (not to mention, they've thought a little more about the problems that you solve and how your product relates to their business).

Step 3: The Trip

After getting an answer to this question, you can take what you've learned and countermove — we'll call this The Trip. By making a statement that challenges them into action, and engages them into looking at you and your product more deeply, you can now reach into your your quiver of challenging declarations and pull one out to get you prospect’s attention and trip them to the ground.

You’ll make a declaration and try to either hit a nerve around one of your prospect’s pain points, or describe something that they really want. You want to resonate with them on an emotional level. This is a push declaration. It's a risk because you're putting yourself out there a little bit, but the right declaration will push the prospect in a way that gets them interested and engaged for further conversation because you spoke directly to a business problem or goal.

How do you choose the right push declaration? Well, let me tell you how I would do it for Badger Maps; a field sales application that helps sales reps plan routes and save time.

Learn how you can maximize your sales routes and make the most out of your day with Badger Maps:

Now, let's imagine that I'm in a sales conversation with a VP of Sales. He’s asked me to just send along my information, and I've used my disarming question.

Let's say I learned that the thing he wanted more information on was how Badger will help save his sales team from spending time zigzagging around town. My push declaration should make a statement about the problems his team must be experiencing since they don't use a modern routing tool.

I would say: “Sure, I can send you information on how we help sales reps with routing. So, your sales team must be wasting a lot of time behind the wheel if they're not using a routing tool to organize their days. I guess they would they get a lot more meetings with qualified customers if they had a solution to build optimized routes."

There are a few things to unpack in this statement. Keep these things in mind as you build your push declaration:

I acknowledged the information that they wanted.

I called out the pain of someone who doesn't have the thing that they wanted information about.

I made that relate to business value in their organization.

You can take a three-second pause here for your prospect to verbally or even silently agree with your statement. Once they have, they've been tripped.

Step 4: The Redirect

Now you can redirect the prospect to your solution. In the context of my example, I would say: “The average salesperson using Badger to organize their daily routes drives 20% fewer miles and gets 20% more meetings. If your salespeople are getting 20% more meetings, what would it mean for your company?”

This value statement restarts the conversation. You move past getting brushed aside by a common objection to having a meaningful conversation about how your solution can drive their business results. You were a pesky salesperson, now you're starting to earn the prospect's trust.

I’ve thrown a lot at you here, and I'd like to take a step back to summarize what we just did so that you can do it yourself.

Now you're ready to use sales judo. You know how to take this common objection, overcome it, and have a productive sales conversation.
Thanks for reading and happy selling!

Plan out more than just price objections! Learn how to optimize your planned sales routes and crush your quota!